Home.
LOVE BINDS US TO THE WORLD
HOME: Noun (Oxford Dictionary)
Website Explanation
Each tab within this website is intentionally named. Definitions from the Oxford Dictionary for many tab names are identified and personally interpreted to align with the theme to be discussed within the tab.
This integrated capstone project orients it's lens and language around metaphor from the Earth, and inclusive language aligned with my authentic self. I strive to ensure this portfolio is accessible for a broad range of viewers from diverse demographics and backgrounds. Throughout the portfolio, I speak and share from a transparent place inclusive of mind, body, and spirit to align with the NEW ECOLOGY Project framework.
- the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household
Website Explanation
Each tab within this website is intentionally named. Definitions from the Oxford Dictionary for many tab names are identified and personally interpreted to align with the theme to be discussed within the tab.
This integrated capstone project orients it's lens and language around metaphor from the Earth, and inclusive language aligned with my authentic self. I strive to ensure this portfolio is accessible for a broad range of viewers from diverse demographics and backgrounds. Throughout the portfolio, I speak and share from a transparent place inclusive of mind, body, and spirit to align with the NEW ECOLOGY Project framework.
Micro and Macro Layers of Home
When someone asks us where is home, we tend to identify the location or place where a building provides shelter from the elements. It is a place we ideally feel safe and comfortable. I selected the term ‘home’ to initiate a discussion about the NEW ECOLOGY Project because I identify home as a starting point. My personal definition of home encompasses a more micro and macro context than the definition describe above. The micro systems that makes up home is within my body and being, my spirit. Feeling safe, secure, and comfortable within my body and mind, I am able to adapt and create 'home' where-ever I am geographically located. My macro view of home takes into consideration the ecological system, the Earth. Both contexts describe home as a system within which I permanently live - and I argue both context of home are more enduring than what provides me with shelter.
Identifying home as my physical body/being and the planet, informs the NEW ECOLOGY Project framework start and end point. The process of exploring ones ecology begins with relationship their micro context: ones physical body, mind, and spirit. As one begins to transition observe this relationship and how they interface with the external world, a new ecology may begin to emerge. Through healing, recovery, and new relationship with self, the end point is establishing a new relationship with the macro system. When in healthy relationship with the earth, the aim is for one to participate in the world in a sustainable way.
Within a practice where micro and macro inform one another, I strive to support a person and/or community create and identify home within. I have seen the beginning stages of this in my work at Shunda Creek Wilderness Treatment Center for Addictions. The residential program supports individuals through recovery from addiction by using self inquiry, community living, and the wilderness as therapeutic tools. The wilderness is used as a tool to support the clients getting to know themselves and their behaviours. In addition, my practicum experiences demonstrate provided me with opportunities to study and interact with micro and macro levels of change. My practicum at Four Worlds Center for Development Learning focused on the macro system. It enabled me to explore community and social change processes within First Nation communities through incorporating a medicine wheel model. This model accounted for the different intersecting systems that interact to inform the identity of a person or community. My second practicum in Trauma Sensitive Yoga deepened my understanding of the micro system, mind-body-spirit, and how to use yoga as an adjunctive treatment to support recovery from trauma.
Both these practicum experiences inform my future goals and ambitions to work with Four Worlds Center for Development Learning to create and deliver a collaborative therapeutic trauma intervention project for traumatized communities.
When someone asks us where is home, we tend to identify the location or place where a building provides shelter from the elements. It is a place we ideally feel safe and comfortable. I selected the term ‘home’ to initiate a discussion about the NEW ECOLOGY Project because I identify home as a starting point. My personal definition of home encompasses a more micro and macro context than the definition describe above. The micro systems that makes up home is within my body and being, my spirit. Feeling safe, secure, and comfortable within my body and mind, I am able to adapt and create 'home' where-ever I am geographically located. My macro view of home takes into consideration the ecological system, the Earth. Both contexts describe home as a system within which I permanently live - and I argue both context of home are more enduring than what provides me with shelter.
Identifying home as my physical body/being and the planet, informs the NEW ECOLOGY Project framework start and end point. The process of exploring ones ecology begins with relationship their micro context: ones physical body, mind, and spirit. As one begins to transition observe this relationship and how they interface with the external world, a new ecology may begin to emerge. Through healing, recovery, and new relationship with self, the end point is establishing a new relationship with the macro system. When in healthy relationship with the earth, the aim is for one to participate in the world in a sustainable way.
Within a practice where micro and macro inform one another, I strive to support a person and/or community create and identify home within. I have seen the beginning stages of this in my work at Shunda Creek Wilderness Treatment Center for Addictions. The residential program supports individuals through recovery from addiction by using self inquiry, community living, and the wilderness as therapeutic tools. The wilderness is used as a tool to support the clients getting to know themselves and their behaviours. In addition, my practicum experiences demonstrate provided me with opportunities to study and interact with micro and macro levels of change. My practicum at Four Worlds Center for Development Learning focused on the macro system. It enabled me to explore community and social change processes within First Nation communities through incorporating a medicine wheel model. This model accounted for the different intersecting systems that interact to inform the identity of a person or community. My second practicum in Trauma Sensitive Yoga deepened my understanding of the micro system, mind-body-spirit, and how to use yoga as an adjunctive treatment to support recovery from trauma.
Both these practicum experiences inform my future goals and ambitions to work with Four Worlds Center for Development Learning to create and deliver a collaborative therapeutic trauma intervention project for traumatized communities.
Locating Self
To support a transparent process that identifies what has informed the NEW ECOLOGY Project, the following paragraphs identify some layers contributing to creating home within me and as a steward for the life sustaining planet.
I have walked with a lens of compassion and fairness for all beings since I can remember. Being born and raised during apartheid in South Africa, my formative years were spent living in an unjust society. My childhood was filled with time outdoors close to land and water, barefoot and active! When my family moved to Canada, I grew extremely homesick and spent every spare moment applying myself to learn about the country from where I came.
As a new immigrant from South Africa, a country with a horrific racist track record, I found myself participating in a personal journey of unpacking guilt and shame, race, privilege, power and oppression. Uncomfortable in my own skin, I looked to what I knew – growing up close the land – I went to the Canadian wilderness to seek peace and healing. I was so moved by being on the land and living in the wilderness for a long period of time, I pursued it professionally with a career as an Outdoor Wilderness Guide. I was blessed with the opportunity to guide 35 day paddling expeditions, to take youth back packing for several weeks in the Canadian Rockies, or to go dog sledding trips through the wilderness of Canadian parks. 13 years of living over half the year in a tent not only informed my bones and soul, but will guide my choices for the rest of my life.
The accumulated years of lessons, growth, and healing from yoga, the Earth, and from community, inform my present academic, professional, and personal journey. The years leading to this moment have been rich experiences of learning. All the learning has been through relational experiences such as, cross cultural exchanges in the Amazon in Guyana, traveling and living in Guatemala, service projects in Costa Rica, learning to practice in Baja, Mexico, or celebrating spirit and creativity within community. None of my growth exists in isolation – and I have connection to community to thank for that.
My personal and professional story is a web of interacting themes that integrate and inform one another, such as: social justice, the natural Earth, spirituality, community, and healing. All these themes readily integrate and inform my practice model through theory, application, practicum experiences, and personal growth.
Throughout this portfolio, it is my hope that viewers will see the interactions between themes. Throughout my two years of study, one of the most literal and apparent concepts that drives life and my practice model is complexity – a challenging web to demonstrate. I begin to demonstrate the integration of themes and the complexity of interactions through choosing words carefully, because language informs how one interprets the world. ‘The NEW ECOLOGY Project' was selected to emphasize my intention to re-orient our present day consciousness and systems on individual, community, and global scales. Although I specialized in international and community development, the NEW ECOLOGY framework acknowledges the intersections between micro, mezzo and macro layers.
To support a transparent process that identifies what has informed the NEW ECOLOGY Project, the following paragraphs identify some layers contributing to creating home within me and as a steward for the life sustaining planet.
I have walked with a lens of compassion and fairness for all beings since I can remember. Being born and raised during apartheid in South Africa, my formative years were spent living in an unjust society. My childhood was filled with time outdoors close to land and water, barefoot and active! When my family moved to Canada, I grew extremely homesick and spent every spare moment applying myself to learn about the country from where I came.
As a new immigrant from South Africa, a country with a horrific racist track record, I found myself participating in a personal journey of unpacking guilt and shame, race, privilege, power and oppression. Uncomfortable in my own skin, I looked to what I knew – growing up close the land – I went to the Canadian wilderness to seek peace and healing. I was so moved by being on the land and living in the wilderness for a long period of time, I pursued it professionally with a career as an Outdoor Wilderness Guide. I was blessed with the opportunity to guide 35 day paddling expeditions, to take youth back packing for several weeks in the Canadian Rockies, or to go dog sledding trips through the wilderness of Canadian parks. 13 years of living over half the year in a tent not only informed my bones and soul, but will guide my choices for the rest of my life.
The accumulated years of lessons, growth, and healing from yoga, the Earth, and from community, inform my present academic, professional, and personal journey. The years leading to this moment have been rich experiences of learning. All the learning has been through relational experiences such as, cross cultural exchanges in the Amazon in Guyana, traveling and living in Guatemala, service projects in Costa Rica, learning to practice in Baja, Mexico, or celebrating spirit and creativity within community. None of my growth exists in isolation – and I have connection to community to thank for that.
My personal and professional story is a web of interacting themes that integrate and inform one another, such as: social justice, the natural Earth, spirituality, community, and healing. All these themes readily integrate and inform my practice model through theory, application, practicum experiences, and personal growth.
Throughout this portfolio, it is my hope that viewers will see the interactions between themes. Throughout my two years of study, one of the most literal and apparent concepts that drives life and my practice model is complexity – a challenging web to demonstrate. I begin to demonstrate the integration of themes and the complexity of interactions through choosing words carefully, because language informs how one interprets the world. ‘The NEW ECOLOGY Project' was selected to emphasize my intention to re-orient our present day consciousness and systems on individual, community, and global scales. Although I specialized in international and community development, the NEW ECOLOGY framework acknowledges the intersections between micro, mezzo and macro layers.